


Aftermath

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [73]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Codependency, Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Wakanda, Wanda working out issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 06:05:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6788998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve comes – of <i>course</i> he comes – to break them out, Wanda is <i>angry.</i> Only Clint’s hands on her shoulders – gently reassuring, a trust that the scarlet already lashing will not hurt him even if it will try to claw its way out of the prison – keep her from bringing it all down atop them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I'm me. I love Wanda Maximoff. Did you honestly think I _wasn't_ going to write something after CACW?
> 
>  **Note:** I put this into the oneshots because it was originally intended to be one and then got out of hand. I considered posting it as the three chapters you'll see marked but figured it worked best all at once with those as more figurative divisions in it.

* * *

**_Aftermath_ **

* * *

 

 

* * *

**Chapter 1 – To Be Free**

* * *

Wanda grieves still. In the back of her mind, always turning and alight with scarlet, she grieves her brother.

There is more to grieve now, to grieve in the waking world as much as the sleeping, as much as in the subconscious corner of the back of her mind that she knows will never stop.

This will stop, eventually, and that is in its way a relief. Grieving all this – all those dead by her mistake, her lack of skill – forever… that would crush her and she is crushed already.

 _It was my choice to go,_  she whispers to Vision’s mind, so far away. It matters not that she is in her cell and he is in the Facility. It matters not the collar at her neck that will tase her if she tries to use her scarlet, matters not that she is restrained as much as they can manage so she cannot pull her scarlet into being.

Vision has the Mind Stone, that which gave her her powers. Like Pietro’s mind, his shining beacon of a brain is as easy to find as breathing.

 _I am sorry_ , he whispers back, golden words and orange, dripping into her mind like tears.  _I did not-_

 _Mean for this?_  Wanda’s mind is mocking. He did not, no. No. But she is locked up all the same, tied up like an animal, spoonfed food like a child, reminded with every waking moment of her time in the castle, a time when - at least then - Pietro was nearby.

 _I am sorry_ , Vision repeats, and Wanda has had  _enough_  of apologies. She has tried apologies. There are always those who will not forgive. Always those who will still seek their revenge – and are not she and Pietro perfect examples of what happens then! – always those dissatisfied.

 _Apologies,_  she sends to Vision,  _Mean_ **nothing**.

 

* * *

 

Wanda can always feel her scarlet, twisting and turning just out of reality, just beyond the bounds of sight, warping beneath her skin and through it, as much a part of her as Pietro’s speed had been of him. She wonders, sometimes, with her scarlet growing as it has, developing as it has (such distances, taming smoke, reaching across the very world) if Pietro’s powers would have changed too.

Sometimes she dreams, and sees Pietro running even faster still.

Sometimes she wakes, and it takes her long moments to realise that she is in the Raft and not the castle, restrained by a straitjacket and not tied down to her bed, that she is alone, and there is no longer Pietro at her side.

(Those days her scarlet is a storm beneath her skin, wanting, so much, to lash out as it had when he had died. Control, she has learned control now and forces her scarlet to obey her, but this… being trapped like this, collared like this,  _alone_  like this. She spits food in the faces of those who come to feed her, those days and would use her scarlet but for fear of tasing.)

 

* * *

 

When Steve comes – of _course_  he comes – to break them out, Wanda is  _angry_. Only Clint’s hands on her shoulders – gently reassuring, a trust that the scarlet already lashing will not hurt him even if it will try to claw its way out of the prison – keep her from bringing it all down atop them.

(She knows she could. She has had weeks of learning the way her scarlet coils under her skin, of how much there is, how intense, how strong. This is more than mindless grief, like when Pietro died. This is focussed, sustained anger, cold and crisp and deadly precise, as it had been aimed at Ultron.)

(She had torn through vibranium then. She could tear through a city now.)

 

* * *

 

Wakanda is… it is free.

T’Challa gives them space, gives them a place, lets them wander in the forests and the grounds and through the buildings. There are great halls and great fields and great green forests, and Wanda screams herself hoarse one day, scarlet stretching out and out and out before she collapses of exhaustion.

Clint finds her (he always finds her) and takes her back to her room, letting her lean on him. She does not want touch, now, not from anyone, and when she burrows beneath blankets, hides from the world, Clint takes the hint and leaves.

Wanda does not want to be here, free within and yet trapped without its borders. It is too like being trapped outright - in a cave in, in a cell, in a straitjacket.

All Wanda wants, now, is to be free. To use her powers for herself and those she chooses to, to be away from this, out of this, to be  _free_ , as free as flying and as falling.

Sometimes she looks out of the windows and wonders how far she would fall, how hard she would hit, before becoming nothing but dead.

 

* * *

There are nightmares, of course, but Wanda has had nightmares since she was ten years old. It is easy to wake from them, walk from them, to sit at a balcony, listen to the sounds of the forest below. When she listens carefully, over the sound of the crickets and the cicadas she can hear the muffled roar of a waterfall.

She wants, more than anything, to be home, not her room in the Facility, not her room here, not the room of her childhood, but just Sokovia, cold stretching mountains, gradually sloping valleys and Pietro’s presence everywhere.

She wonders, distantly, if she could fly that distance with her scarlet alone.

 

* * *

 

She has not contacted Vision since the Raft.

She could, she knows. She could make her own apology, accept his, make some peace and try to repair the friendship they had shared. Telepathic, maybe, and none of the reassurance of his odd cool touch, but a mending all the same.

She won’t.

The risk of it, revealing their place of safety, is not worth a lost friendship, even hers, even if she has lost so much.

Clint, she knows, might say otherwise, but he is Clint and he has always been biased when it comes to her and her brother, one way or another.

(“I owe a debt,” he had said.  _Yes_ , Wanda had thought, vicious with frustration in the dark corners of her mind.  _You do. My brother died for you. Make amends for what you took from me._ )

Wanda wonders now, what has been taken from her. Home after home, safety after safety, freedom after freedom, her own blood, half her very  _self_. Does she even have anything left that can be taken?

Friendships, maybe, but she has not been maintaining those she has. She ignores Clint, more often than not, ignores Steve, refuses what company Sam and Scott and T’Challa each have offered. She has blocked out Vision, withdrawn even the least last touch of her scarlet from his mind.

With Pietro gone, with the world like this… she is alone.

There is, Wanda supposes, a freedom in being alone.

 

* * *

 

Clint finds her, toes curled over the cold railing, arms spread so her shawl trails. She’s balancing, perfectly, scarlet tugging her this way and that in counter to the wind, and it takes all her focus to keep it doing so, keeping her, every moment and second, from falling.

 _This,_  she thinks,  _is freedom_. _No men, no masters, no one to answer to but myself and the wind._

Wanda is moments from letting herself pitch over, letting herself fly at last, when Clint calls her name.

 

* * *

 

“I will not fall,” she says. She is calm, perfectly so, calm with focus and effort and the scarlet holding her in place.

“Really?” Clint asks, and Wanda had not expected the venom of his tone. “You weren’t about to pitch yourself over anyway?”

Wanda shrugs, lets her scarlet keep her in place. “I can catch myself.”

Clint is silent. Over the cicadas and crickets Wanda hears his boot tapping on the metal of the balcony.

“I want to be  _free_ ,” she explains. “Free and alone and away from all of this. What more do I have to lose before I can have that?”

Clint’s hand is callused and gentle against her ankle, as he lifts her down half over his shoulder as she’s seen him carry his children.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I think you’d do more working towards it than pitching yourself off a cliff.”

 

* * *

 

That night she stretches out her mind to Vision’s. There is no reason to say anything, and so she doesn’t, just sits at the edge of Vision’s orange databanks and grey-green neurons and watches.

 _Do you fear me?_  she asks eventually. She remembers their talk of amygdalae, of making the world see people before their powers, and wonders if, after all this, he might fear her at last, one of the few who had not feared her before.

She sees his startlement, the wave of it through neurons and databanks alike.  _Wanda_ , he thinks, her name rising out of his mind like a prayer.  _No_ , he thinks.  _Fear **for** you, yes. But not you yourself._

Wanda watches his mind, all his gold-and-green sincerity shining out.  _Sometimes_ , she admits,  _I do not think you should have saved me in Novi Grad_.

 

* * *

 

She drifts away from Vision’s mind, but doesn’t cut the contact entirely. She knows when he thinks of her, calls up memories as crisp and clear as photographs, knows when he thinks  _to_  her, offers her some image or emotion or vague thought for her to turn over.

It’s…

There’s something reassuring in it, some sense that for all her self-imposed isolation she isn’t alone. She sits on her balcony, feet dangling over the edge, arms looped over the lower rails, chin on her arms, and stretches out her mind to Vision’s.

 

* * *

 

 _They talked about changing the Accords today_ , he sends, when he notices her presence. He doesn’t always notice when she is watching, but he is getting better at it, feeling her scarlet in amongst the burgundy backdrop of his mind.  _After it had done so little, been manipulated so easily, they want to… I believe the saying is ‘batten down the hatches’? They don’t want another incident, what with more and more enhanced coming into being. Spiderman is but the first of another number to come._

Wanda’s mind offers a soft hum of interest, just a hint of gold and black in amongst her scarlet presence in Vision’s mind.  _What does that mean for us, here?_  she asks, and the images of Steve and Scott and Clint and Sam, a memory of Bucky altered to feel as recent as theirs.  _Are we still running and hiding?_

There is a pause from Vision, data shuffled between nodes in reams of bright gold and orange.  _I believe_ , he sends back,  _that Mr. Stark intends to gain you all some degree of amnesty. With Wakanda no longer asking for your arrest, accepting there is only so much enhanced people can do… Some of the board appear to be willing to try understanding._

Wanda supposes this is a good thing, a thing to mention to the others, but then she would have to tell them where the information came from.

 

* * *

 

“Tony is talking about changing the Accords,” T’Challa says the next time he visits. “Somehow he gained enough sway to work around Ross.”

Steve, Sam and Clint watch closely, Scott merely shrugs.

“I don’t know what it means for you all yet,” he says. “But Stark has been arguing for the signees right to decide what they will and will not participate in.”

“So we wouldn’t be their personal army if we signed,” Clint says. “That’s progress at least.”

“What about punishment?” Scott asks. “We did kinda destroy an airport.”

“That, “T’Challa says, “I do not yet know.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda doesn’t know if, even should the Accords be changed, she’d want to leave Wakanda. She still has no passport, still is Sokovian with no ties to America, still is hated for powers which are not entirely understood, even by her.

And, after all, trusting changed Accords means trusting Stark.

 

* * *

 

 _He is not so bad as all that,_  Vision sends when she posits her ponderings to him that evening.  _He is stubborn, yes, and demanding, but he takes a great weight of the guilt upon himself._

 _So he should_ , Wanda thinks, and remembers the shell with Stark’s name on it, remembers being trapped in Stark’s facility, remembers the collar choking around her neck.

 _Maybe_ , Vision sends.  _But you can rest assured you cannot think him as guilty as he thinks himself._

That, Wanda supposes, is a kind of comfort.

 

* * *

 

Vision’s mind has spent most of the day trying to get Wanda’s attention, but she has been busy with other things, learning Wakandan scientific terms enough to speak to the techs readying to unfreeze Barnes, mapping his sleeping brain as best she can so she can clean out the sticky tar-strands of HYDRA’s programming from his brain.

It is not until that evening, they all gathered around the table for dinner, waiting for the morning when they might have Barnes back for good, that T’Challa tells them of the changes to the Accords, and Wanda lets Vision into her mind.

 

* * *

 

 _Wanda?_  is sent, and echoes in grey-green and orange-gold against the black and red of Wanda’s vast cathedral of a mind. Sometimes, if she looks just right, she can see the old outline of the synagogue, but with Pietro gone, with no dancing mezuzah in the brink between their minds she has stretched still further from the form her mind had first taken.

(This does not stop there being the grave markers, made of memories and candles, and pebbles in every colour she can dream of, to commemorate Pietro and their parents.)

 _I am here_ , she thinks, the words spelled out and said in great rings of scarlet. There is a calm, she thinks, from working, from good news like this, and her mind is vast and peaceful, not quite empty but quiet and restful.  _How was your day?_

There is a query in the gold that Vision sends next, and Wanda remembers she has barely asked after him since the war they had fought. All the same he quickly replies.

 _Busy. Changing Accords is apparently a rather complex business_.

Wanda hears the note of amusement in his voice, the slight touch of teasing, and smiles.  _We have heard too_ , she says.  _Some of us may return, if Stark can promise not to hurt Barnes_.

She sends to him a vague outline of what they mean to do, have been trying to do to help Barnes, seeking out the works of HYDRA in his mind and removing them or remaking them or rendering them useless. It is hard going and Wanda is grateful of the time it consumes, time she does not have to spend thinking of the Raft or the battle or anything else she does not want to deal with in that moment.

 _If he is no longer the Winter Soldier_ , Vision sends,  _I think Tony may try to offer him an apology_.

 

* * *

 

Barnes flinches away from her hands, when she first tries to enter his mind when he wakes, but with Steve’s presence he calms and his mind opens readily and easily before her. The cankers of HYDRA’s rot are as glaringly present in his waking mind as his sleeping, and Wanda sends her scarlet to break the struts of the tumorous connections to his mind.

 

* * *

Wanda does not want to return, and barring Clint and Scott most of them feel safer in Wakanda than they might in America.

(Still, more than anything, Wanda wants to return  _home_  to Sokovia, but she fears the people would not welcome one who caused the destruction of a third of their city.)

Wanda stays when Clint and Scott leave, and sends a single thought to Vision that he will not be let down when the plane arrives.

 _I understand_ , he sends in reply.  _I would understand if you never wanted to see any of our faces again._

 

* * *

 

Wanda thinks. Wanda sighs.  _Enough_ , Wanda thinks,  _is enough_. She sends to Vision their coordinates, long reams of numbers memorised from a computer screen when they had arrived.

There is a moment of confusion from the databanks and neurons, and then a pause, the idea of a smile.  _May I phase through your wall?_  he sends, and Wanda remembers the days they had all spent explaining to Vision the myriad complexities of individual courtesies as preferred by each of them.

(Enter when the door is open only, and knock if it is closed)

 _I think,_  Wanda sends,  _that will not be necessary. But if you want to, I do not object_.

 

* * *

 

When Vision phases through her wall many hours later Wanda has warned T’Challa of the visit. There are no alarms as Vision’s feet touch down on the ring of carpet in her room, and Wanda does not have to see him to feel the bright near presence of his mind.

There is much between them, with her house arrest, the battle, and her imprisonment in the Raft, and it is not forgiveness so much as acceptance that leads Wanda to hug him when she sees him there.

 _Never_ , she impresses on him,  _imprison me again_.

“I am sorry,” he murmurs, arms cool and steady around her shoulders. “I should not have tried to keep you from leaving.”

It’s a genuine apology, as each of his ever are, and Wanda manages a smile, huffs half a laugh. “Remember,” she replies. “One-on-one, I will kick your ass.”

Wanda feels from Vision’s mind, that that has never been in doubt.

 

* * *

 

 

* * *

**Chapter 2 – More Than Purpose**

* * *

Steve and Bucky consider returning, over the next few days. Sam, oddly enough, is torn, unable to choose between the certain safety of Wakanda, the security it provides, and being home and free and with the people he calls friends. Wanda does not want to leave at all.

“You would not be imprisoned,” Stark says, and Wanda snorts at the screen.

“No?” she says. “Not for being unable to fully control powers I do not completely understand yet, not for trying to be free of a house arrest you had  _no right_ to put me under, not for fighting for the side that made no attempt to  _control me?”_

Stark shrugs. “Leipzig airport may want an apology.”

“ _Fuck them_ ,” Wanda spits. “And  _fuck you_. None of you listened to any one of us. None of you considered that  _we are not stupid_. That we want to be able to decide for ourselves, not have things decided for us. We are not  _children_  needing parents, except perhaps your Spiderman.”

“The others-”

“The others want to go  _home_. I do not have a home, any more, thanks to your Ultron.” 

Stark is quiet.

“Did you think,” Wanda asks, “About  _any_  of it?”

Stark blinks, tilts his head, starts with a, “ _Well-”_

“Did you think that house arrest was any kinder than any other form of imprisonment?” Wanda interrupts. “Before that, the last time I had been imprisoned was the castle, with Pietro in the next cell as we tried to learn to control our powers. Before that it was police cells, before that it was trapped in rubble when our parents had died. And then, after house arrest, I get imprisoned, tied up in a straitjacket and collared like an animal, not allowed to use my powers to chase away even my nightmares or move my hair from my face, tased for even trying, reminded  _constantly_  of every other time I have been trapped.”

Stark is silent.

“If you think,” Wanda says, “That I will forgive you, or fight for you  _ever again_ ,you are sorely mistaken.”

 

* * *

 

Anger is anger and Wanda is well used to anger. Better anger, she knows, than dwelling on the myriad thoughts and memories of cells and imprisonment, of being trapped. Dwelling does no good, that was what Pietro had always said. They had dwelled on one thing and one thing only, their parents’ death, something so integral to them they could not ever forget it.

Wanda’s laugh is bitter. _Look how that turned out_.

What purpose does dwelling have? What purpose anger? What purpose _anything?_ Were it not for Clint’s words, Vision’s presence, she might go and pitch herself off the cliff.

No. No, deeper than that. If she killed herself Pietro would never forgive her. He had dedicated his life to protecting her, to seeing her safe, to being the guard ever at her shoulder. Now, having lost so much, she cannot discard the love her brother had shown her. Cannot discard the care that he had given, the life his efforts had provided her with.

But what is left, Wanda wonders. What is left? A world which hates her. A world without her brother. No place on any team and powers that while she can control she cannot understand. What is left?

Wanda doubts, in truth, there is really anything left at all.

“There is you,” Vision offers, when she brings her questions to him. “There is always you. What would you do, now?”

Wanda frowns at him. She is hated. So _what_ if there is her, if there is no one who will trust her, will care about her as a person? What does it matter? She is as insignificant now as she had been in the protests. More so, if anything, with the hatred directed at her face and name.

In these moments, on days like these, there is almost nothing she would not give to have Pietro back.

 

* * *

 

“There is evil coming,” Vision offers, a few days later. Wanda knows Vision does not use words like _evil_ for no reason. “What is left?” he asks. “Evil. There are always those who will do harm, those who would destroy. There is whoever has been playing games with us, attempting to find-” he taps his fingertips to the gem in his brow “-this and its fellows. There is evil coming, and there are few with power enough to fight something capable of those kinds of games, and with goals of the Infinity Stones.”

Wanda shrugs. “There is you,” she says. “There is Thor, and all of Asgard. There are those Inhumans, and people like that Spider-boy. There will be plenty of people to fight.”

Vision’s expression is sad all the same. “Will they be strong enough? Peter is but a child. Inhumans must learn to use their powers, and they can vary between simple things and complex. Thor and Asgard have their own concerns, beyond just ours.” He is quiet for a moment, letting Wanda consider. “And,” he says, slowly, working the words out, almost unwillingly, “Whoever this is, coming for these stones… they will come for me, eventually, to take the Mind Stone. I do not doubt they will manage to take it, if they have begun to collect the others. Who will fight them then?”

Maybe, Wanda considers. There are few that she might fight for any more, anywhere in the world. For Vision… maybe she might fight, for his sake, but she cannot say for certain. She has lost enough. Is it even worth fighting each new loss she will have to endure? The loss will come all the same, and only cut all the deeper if she throws herself into the crossfire.

“The Avengers will fight,” she says, slowly, and does not let the lump in her throat speak its sorrow. “Myself… I do not know yet. What is the point in fighting the inevitable?”

She can hear the soft smile, the tone of comfort in Vision’s voice. “It is only inevitable if you let it be.”

He is sincere. He is always sincere. Wanda sees his face, watching calm and comforting. “Maybe,” she says, remembering every time she has fought and lost all the same. “But even when I do not let it be I lose all the same.”

 

* * *

 

Vision leaves eventually. He has to. Has his own job and duty with the Avengers, cannot stay with her as long as either of them might wish.

Wanda knows this, but it burns all the same.

Wakanda is beautiful – its forests and cities, its people and artwork, the animals that emerge from the trees, the technology the people dream up. It’s beautiful, Wanda knows this, and knows she should spend more time with it, admire it as much as it deserves, give it the consideration it should have. She’s spent hours, looking out the windows, watching monkeys swing through the trees, clamber up the black panther carved out of a piece of cliff.

“It is ancient,” T’Challa tells her one day, when he notices her watching. “Almost a thousand years old. It was carved with some of the finest vibranium tools of the age, and we maintain it still.”

Wanda tilts her head, watches the monkeys swing over the bared teeth, rest inside the snarling mouth. “Why?” she murmurs. T’Challa is silent, and when she looks at him one eyebrow is raised. “Why carve it? It is beautiful but… what purpose does it serve?”

T’Challa smiles. “It serves more than just a purpose. Not everything has to have one, but the panther, it has many. It is the responsibility of the Black Panther – not the statue, the person – to protect Wakanda and her interests. Responsibility and duty, and they must be earned, as the title is. The panther was carved in respect of that, and to show anyone who sees it what Wakanda’s people can do.”

He pauses, and Wanda can see his smile as he gestures towards the mass of dark stone. “Look at it. It is more than purpose. It is beautiful. It is strong. It is fierce. It is everything the panther of the forests is meant to be, and yet it is made of stone. And it was not made by Wakanda’s protector, it was made by her _people_. If that is what Wakanda’s people are capable of, from a thousand years ago, what is Wakanda capable of now? What is the Black Panther capable of now?”

In the maw of the panther the monkeys watch from their vantage point. The low clouds are misting down over them, the water glistening over the stone of the panther. “More than purpose,” Wanda says, turning the phrase over with mind and tongue. “More than purpose,” she says and nods. It is time, she supposes, to find more to life than purpose.

 

* * *

 

 _More to life than purpose_ , Wanda thinks. More to life than purpose. She could relax, she knows. Read one of the myriad books available, but she has read the most interesting – the ones on the history of Wakanda – already. There are kitchens here, she knows, not just the kitchen where they cooked when they all were there, but ones to feed all the staff, to provide food for those unable to cook.

Wanda follows the scents of cooking food to the kitchens and knocks.

 

* * *

 

The kitchen is quiet now, late as it is, but there is a woman, checking bowls of soaking grains, checking the meat in one oven, the curry on one stovetop. She glances as Wanda enters, but continues her circuit, not pausing until she has checked every thing in the room twice over and is settled in a chair in the corner, a cup of steaming liquid in her hands.

“Will you teach me?” Wanda asks, and the woman looks up at her with some measure of surprise.

“You do not know?” she asks. “You do not know and want to _learn_?”

“I know,” Wanda says, “But Sokovian food. Not Wakandan. Will you teach me?”

The woman’s smile is bright and wide against the dark of her skin, and Wanda remembers this as the smile Katerina had given when Pietro had asked how she made her Austrian beer.

“I will teach you,” she says. “But first, names. I am Nareema. You are?”

Wanda looks at the proffered hand. _More to life than purpose_. She takes it. “Wanda,” she says, shaking the woman’s hand. “Wanda Maximoff.”

Nareema smiles again. “One of the fighters the king brought back? We will have to share stories sometime.”

 

* * *

 

Nareema is patient, teaching Wanda how to balance preparing the rice – _rinse it, girl, **rinse** it, don’t **drown** it_ – with making the curry and the various things to go with it – _never fried a banana? It’s just like an onion, just slice it up and wait for the right smell_ – until Wanda is smiling over the stewpot.

“You said we should share stories?” Wanda asks, stirring the curry, looking to where Nareema sits in the corner with her cup of tea. “You have fought as well?”

“I am of the Dora Milaje,” Nareema says, as though it explains everything. Passing across the surface of her mind are memories, other women, all of them dressed alike with vibranium armour as well made as T’Challa’s, all of them practicing with more weapons than Wanda can count. “It is my job.”

Wanda glances around the kitchen, more than a little confused. In her chair Nareema shrugs. “I like to cook,” she says, smiling. “And the night-cook and assistant night cook are ill. I offered to keep an eye on everything.”

“And the … the Dora Milajjy-”

“Milaje,” Nareema corrects.

“Milaje,” Wanda repeats, sounding out the word. “You fight?”

“We protect the king,” Nareema says. “The king, in turn, protects the nation.”

Wanda knows that cycle, protect one who protects the whole. That was Pietro’s cycle, protecting her so she could find the right path for them both, and she almost does not notice the rice about to boil over she is so lost in memories.

“You need to calm,” Nareema says, when Wanda has pulled the rice off the heat, drained it, started doling out curry from the stewpot. “You cannot cook if you are wound up like a spring, about to break.”

“I know,” Wanda says, setting down the two bowls of rice-and-curry on the low table where the bowls of sliced banana and fried banana, sliced onion and fried onion, grated coconut and whole roasted peanuts are waiting for them. “I know. There is more to life than purpose.”

Nareema smiles. “And more to purpose than just a burden.”

 

* * *

 

 

* * *

**Chapter 3 – Fear Not**

* * *

Anger, Wanda thinks. Hate. Things that can trap her as much as purpose trapped Pietro to his cycle.

Hopelessness. Bitterness. Grasping fingers pulling her down into a pit of misery, a cycle as unending as Pietro’s decision to protect her, observing her decisions like laws.

She is not going to stop hating Stark. She cannot, she does not have forgiveness in her any more. That died with Pietro. Anger… she will remain angry at Stark forever, she thinks, and will not forgive him because she cannot. Forgetting, though, that is possible, though it will take more time than she thinks she has left of life.

(Sometimes she wishes she had died with Pietro. At least then things might be simpler.)

(Sometimes she wants to slap herself for thinking that, for so dismissing all Pietro did to keep them safe.)

Anger. Hate. Forgiveness is no longer an option she has available. She could let go of the offences done against her, she supposes, but that would absolve Stark and after all he has done – for good reasons or for poor – she will not do that.

“You do not mind me staying?” she asks T’Challa, as Steve and Bucky prepare to return to America. There are several days yet, before they will, and she is, they have said, welcome to join them. Wanda does not know if she will – if she _can_.

She still hates Stark. She will not fight for Stark, nor forgive him.

_More to life than purpose. More to purpose than just a burden._

Maybe, if she returns, she will not have to fight. Will not have to be on the team. Does it matter? She will not be free if she does. She is trapped in the safety of Wakanda or she is trapped by the politics of America.

Wanda thinks she will never be free again, nothing more than a threat or a weapon to the world.

“You are welcome to stay,” T’Challa says. “We wanted oversight for what happened, not you all to be entrapped. You only want freedom, to not have your powers be a risk or a threat. America, trying to trap you again, will not help that. You are welcome to stay.”

Wanda does not think she knows enough languages to say _thank you_ in.

 

* * *

 

Wanda watches the Captain leave. Bucky, smiling gently, his hands – flesh and the one of made of steel and vibranium to replace the lost replacement – gently cupping hers in thanks for her wiping the strands of HYDRA’s tar from his mind, the Captain, watching and uncertain.

“I failed the team,” he murmurs, before he steps aboard the Quinjet. “I focussed on one and not the whole.”

They both glance to Bucky and Wanda’s expression does not change.

“If I were in your place,” she says, voice soft, “And it were Pietro returned to me I would have done the same. I cannot judge you for this.”

“I still-” he starts and Wanda can see the images flashing across his mind, them all in cells, the small round burns on her neck from when the collar had tased her, the sores were it had rubbed when pulled too tight.

“You did not know. None of us knew what Ross would do.”

There is a burning certainty in Steve’s eyes, the same as the one which drove him to protect Bucky, the same one which has guided him all this time. “He never will again,” Steve promises. This is, Wanda knows, his repentance.

 

* * *

 

Wanda watches the forests outside. It is easy to do, and peaceful. The clouds misting down, bringing soft rain or heavy, remind her of autumn in Sokovia, the dark clouds, the humid air before the crisp cool of winter. She sees the monkeys swinging their way through the trees, and sometimes she sees cats following them, big and small.

Once, she is certain, she sees a black panther, coat glistening with moisture, the dark pattern just visible as its muscles flexed in a leap.

The Panther of the Rock is a permanent fixture, great and watching, snarling its challenge at the world. Whether Wanda is angry or calm she finds it reassuring, fixed and unchanging. In some ways she can see Pietro in it, that permanent protection, and it makes her think of Wakanda, with T’Challa their protector until he cannot be any longer.

“It is earned,” he had said, and Wanda knows why. Knows it is not just ability or bloodright, but a choice and a dedication. There can be no space for anything else when one has a dedicated duty.

Pietro had given up much for her. What does it mean, now, that she gives up all of the world, considers giving up her very life, when he is no longer here?

Anger and hate. Calm and nothingness. What _is_ she, anymore, the twin without a twin, the witch without a purpose, the citizen without a place? What is she? Stranger or monster, risk or weapon, is she – will she ever be – anything more than a threat?

There are so very few people unafraid of her. Pietro never had been, but he is gone. Clint was not out of a fierce refusal to fear her even when she is capable of his worst fear, his deepest dread, could wipe away his mind with a single motion. Vision does not fear her, only for her, and that is something she supposes, but Vision, like Clint, is in America, and she does not care to set foot there again.

What is left to her now?

 _More to life than purpose. More to purpose than just a burden_.

Wanda dives into the cathedral of her mind.

 

* * *

 

What is there, any more? Cathedral remains, yes, drifted still farther from the synagogue it had been. Grave markers with candles and pebbles, marking her losses, Mutti, Vati, Bruder. She is an angel here, she knows that, all warped limbs, so many watching eyes, wings made of blood as much as bone and feather.

 _An angel can be monstrous_ , she remembers that. _That is why they say **Fear Not**._

Wanda considers her mind, cathedral walls rising in vast arches, pews spreading off into the distance, altar pattern counting out time like the beads of an abacus sliding from side to side. The monstrances and shrines, holding memories in blue, what little she could find and save of Pietro in her mind. Windows, watching outwards, murals carrying memories, books over and over waiting for memorial hands to grasp.

Black and grey and gold. So little of her true scarlet, except in the candle flames, the light of the stained glass.

Anger and hate swirl through her mind in pale smoke. Calm and nothingness swirl through in shadows. Around her the cathedral rises, winds howl where Pietro used to quiet them, are quiet where he used to raise a chatter. The stone creaks and groans like a living thing, and for all her scarlet wings here Wanda feels so very small against it all.

 _Not today_ , Wanda thinks, ducking and hiding away.

 

* * *

 

The forest is vast. The hills and mountains roll like muscles off into the distance (Wanda remembers Pietro rolling his shoulders, twisting his arm, the way his muscles would move as his hand would open to reveal what he had stolen for her this time). The creatures are constant, the sounds of the crickets and cicadas, the hoots of the monkeys, the glimpses of the cats following their prey.

Today Wanda watches the trees.

The leaves are dark and glossy with the misting rain, and Wanda can see where the rain falls heavier. The animals are quiet today, and it gives her a chance to examine it all more closely, pick apart the shapes of the leaves – ovate, circular, truly leaf-blade, odd jagged edges – the variation in colour, the distinctions of the bark.

When Nareema drops by and startles her, Wanda is flicking through a database on Wakandan trees, matching descriptions to the depictions before her.

“Ebony,” Nareema points to her. “Teak. Leadwood and Mopane.”

Wanda glances to her, looks back to the tablet, to the trees, to Nareema.

“I walk the gardens,” Nareema says. “I know them all.”

Wanda looks out the windows, singles out the trees Nareema had indicated. “Ebony,” she repeats. “Teak, Leadwood, Mopane.”

Nareema smiles. “And many more.”

 

* * *

 

Days later Wanda considers her mind. She is watching from the highest point, perched on the gold-and-black chandelier, bloodied angels wings dripping down behind her, their dark watching eyes wide open. Each climbing wall is stone, grey and certain, the texture of the Panther of the Rock, but not the colour.

In her mind Wanda’s form is an angel. To the world, Wanda is a witch.

People fear witches. People fear angels.

 ** _Fear not_** , Wanda thinks, and rips up the floor of the cathedral.

Anger and hate still swirl her mind like pale smoke. Calm and nothingness whisk through like shadows. Fear, fear permeates all, a coward’s’ yellow gilding, and Wanda could not see it before, could not see the trees of the forest because the forest was all there is. She can pick out the trees now, pick out ebony from teak, can pick out her emotions, anger and calm from this choking fear.

 _I am more than fear_ , Wanda thinks. _More than the fear I cause, the fear I feel_.

 _Fear not!_ Wanda thinks, and it is a command, chasing away the gold, forcing it into the scarlet of her self, the black of her calm, the grey of her strength that she had so long shared with Pietro, becoming brown wood and creamy parchment, becomes the colours she remembers from the synagogue so long ago.

_I saw myself one way. I see myself another way._

Wanda thinks of all the world, fearing her without knowing her, fearing power, what they do not understand – what _she_ does not understand – and smiles, a myriad mouths of her angel’s faces wide and sharp, bloodied wings rustling restlessly, black watching eyes, as many as Grigori’s watching, watching the world.

 _More to life than purpose. More to purpose than just a burden_.

More to herself than just a threat. More to a threat than just the risk.

 _I am a **person**_ , Wanda thinks. **_Fear me not_**.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Nareema](http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Nareema_\(Earth-616\)) is from comics canon, I tweaked her a little and added slightly to her for this fic. Also some of the last part of this was influenced by my dear friend's fic-gift to me, [_Soldier, Weapon, Stranger, Monster_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6786394) which I heartily recommend you all read. If you enjoyed this please leave a comment!


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